did she…? Sorry it’s none of my—ouch!’ She winced and bent her head closer as the baby tugged.
‘Let me.’ With one hand he took some of the slack out of the long silky hank of hair to protect her scalp from sudden assaults and with the other he gently prized the tiny curling fingers from her hair.
It was just as well the task didn’t take him long because she’d forgotten to breathe for the duration. The couple of deep restoring breaths she took to compensate had the middle two buttons on her shirt popping. She hastily pulled the two sides together to cover the pretty lavender lace of her bra.
Whilst she’d automatically adapted her clothes to blend in with the conspicuous conservative office dress policy she’d seen no need—until now—to extend that trend to her undergarments.
‘Is he a toucher?’ her flatmate Toni had sympathetically asked when she’d confessed she wished she’d never started this particular job. Nia had laughed—her laughter had been a little strained. The idea of Jake Prentice chasing her around his desk, or even hers, had been so ludicrous she couldn’t even bring herself to think about it—you couldn’t count one or two disturbing dreams as thinking, could you? The subconscious was a law unto itself.
She hadn’t realised until that moment that he’d never touched her before, not even the casual touching of hands—she’d have remembered. She skipped swiftly over the worrying fact she was so certain of this. It was almost as if he had actively avoided touching her. With an impatient shake of her head, she dismissed this silly idea.
‘Thank you,’ she said huskily as, cheeks pink, she tried to refasten the buttons with clumsy fingers.
What would she do if he tried to help her out of that situation, too? She had a sudden mental image of his long clever fingers dextrously addressing the problem of her buttons—only he wasn’t fastening them! She could feel the warm surge of blood that washed over her fair Celtic skin.
‘I think he’s hungry.’
‘Is he bottle fed?’ she wondered out loud.
‘The poor little tyke didn’t have the option.’
‘Of course not,’ Nia said, miserable that she’d been so tactless. Then as she saw the direction of his oddly distracted gaze she glanced down to check that she was still fully buttoned.
When she raised her relieved eyes, they collided explosively with his. The impact shuddered through her body, awakening all sorts of embarrassing physical responses. Rather than draw attention to the most obvious of these, she didn’t lift her hands like a shield over her tingling breasts.
Jake was astonished that his eyes had strayed as obviously as a schoolboy or some sort of pathetic lecher when he was speaking to the woman. The breast-feeding connection had just been too much for his self-control, especially after that tantalising glimpse of creamy cleavage.
‘Perhaps there’s a bottle in the bag?’ Her voice was desperately normal.
‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ Because you were too busy ogling your secretary is why, he silently replied with a self-derisive shrug. He had no intention of getting a reputation as a serial sucker in the workplace. Besides, she wasn’t available… which was just as well because they had nothing whatever in common.
‘Let me hold him.’ The darkened damp patch on the lining of his jacket was pretty obvious as she picked up the baby. ‘Oops.’ Considering the name she’d seen hand-stitched into the lining, that was quite a costly accident.
To her surprise Jake gave a quick grin—the spontaneous nice sort of grin that she hadn’t known he was capable of. Nia frowned, she’d felt safer when he was an inhumanly demanding boss; she didn’t need any hints of niceness. Not when she had developed this worrying tendency to think lustful thoughts about him. Actually she didn’t even think them—they’d been springing fully formed into her head all afternoon!
CHAPTER TWO
JAKE divided the list of anyone he thought might be able to locate his brother in two and whilst the baby, his stomach full, slept, they worked their way through the contacts.
‘Any joy?’ He pushed the intervening door open and leaned against the jamb, rolling his head slowly from side to side to relieve the tension.
Despite a work schedule that would have had normal mortals on their knees, this was the first time Nia had ever seen him display any physical tiredness. She shook her head rapidly when his quizzical expression brought home the fact she’d been staring a little too obviously.
‘Then we’d better try his place. I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do if there’s no clue there. Are you ready?’
It wasn’t a question or even a request. Nia resisted the temptation to salute.
‘Isn’t there anyone who could look after the baby? Grandparents…?’
Jake glanced rather impatiently down at her, adjusting his stride, rather belatedly, to accommodate the height of her heels and the disparity in their leg length.
‘My mother’s in the States where my sister’s due to give birth to twins at any second, and Josh’s in-laws would only be too happy to take responsibility. As far as they’re concerned possession’s nine-tenths of the law,’ he said drily.
Nia watched as he clipped the baby seat into the back of the Jaguar saloon he drove and wondered where she’d have sat if he’d gone in for a convertible—the boot, probably.
‘You can’t think they wouldn’t give Liam back.’
‘That,’ he said, holding the door open for her—coldly courteous to the last, ‘is exactly what I think. They’ve been trying to convince Josh to let them bring up the baby ever since Bridie died—subtly, and then not so subtly. They’d like nothing better than for Josh to prove himself an unfit father and Josh—being Josh,’ he grated, his voice harsh with frustration, ‘is going out of his way to prove their case. They never wanted Bridie to marry him in the first place.’
Something about the way he said that made her frown thoughtfully. ‘Why, did they have someone else in mind?’ she asked, responding to an intuitive flash.
Jake turned the key in the ignition and the car purred smoothly into life. He’d known it was a mistake to take her out of the office environment. Those big eyes were going to get all misty any minute now, and then she’d decide to personally sort out his life.
‘Yes,’ he said, turning his head to look at her. ‘Me.’
‘Oh!’
This astonishing revelation put an entirely new twist on matters. God knows what emotions were bottled up in that very impressive chest, she thought, unable to resist a furtive little glance at that general area of his anatomy.
He wouldn’t be human if he didn’t feel a bit ambivalent about his twin. On top of that, he was obviously grieving for a woman he’d once loved—still did, for all she knew. God, what a mess, she thought, feeling way out of her depth.
‘Oh indeed,’ he mocked, nodding to the uniformed guardian of the underground parking area. ‘I was engaged to Bridie before she met Josh. If any aspects of my personal life fascinate you, just
